Mark 9:30-37

There’s nothing like the first day of school.  When I was a child, I would wake up on the first day of school with a mixture that was about 95% excitement and 5% fear.  The fear came from not knowing who my teacher was and not knowing who was going to be in my class.  Would my teacher be the same one that my sister had the year before?  Would my friends be in my class?  Would that same insufferable boy be in my class, too?  

The early-morning August air was mild and moist as I walked from my house to Estes Hills Elementary School in Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  It seemed like the tang of expectation hovered in the air along with the humidity.  As I emerged from the trail onto the playground, I eagerly scanned the grounds for my friends.  I crossed the playground towards the school building, already knowing which corridor I needed to travel in order to find my new classroom.  I had enrolled at Estes Hills as a second grader, and I attended there through sixth grade (those were the days before 6th – 8th grade Middle School).

How did I know which class to enter?  I learned my new classroom when I saw my name by the door.  In the younger grades, my name might be written on a picture of a bright red apple or a jaunty yellow box of crayons.  In the older grades, my name might simply be on a list posted by the door, but my name was always there.

In second grade, I hadn’t yet learned the word hospitality, but I sure knew what hospitality felt like.  Hospitality felt like my name posted by the door.  Hospitality also felt like the smiling welcome of my new teacher.  My teacher waited by the door that first day of school, as eager to meet me as I was to meet him or her.  In fact, in some ways, it seemed that my teacher already knew me, and not just because he or she had instructed my older sister the previous year!  Somehow the weeks of preparation that my new teacher had put in while preparing for my arrival had established a prevenient hope and a relationship between the two of us.  

As an adult, I think often about the teachers of my childhood.  I have my own child in school now, and I see from the perspective of one who is no longer an enrolled student, but a parent.  I see local school board meetings that rival tabloid television in their rhetoric.  I see principals and superintendents statewide fight to attract and retain quality teachers.  I see the achievement gap continue to widen in a divided Chapel Hill.  I see middle schools and high schools consistently hiring security guards.  I see funds for music and arts education shrinking.  I see overwhelmed special resources and special education teachers.  I see the uneasy panacea of end-of-grade testing rule the day while children continue to get left behind.

If we take Jesus’ actions of Mark 9: 30 – 37 seriously, we must consider the littlest and the least in any situation that we encounter as people of faith.  Who are the littlest and least in public education?  Obviously, the children would qualify as the littlest, and they often get the least.  Public education is supposed to benefit children primarily, but it seems the adults get so busy arguing that they lose sight of the children.  The children are then left on the fringes, out on the margins of the discussion, waiting for the adults to decide who they think is the greatest and the best.

Next, consider the teachers.  According to the National Education Association, “The statistics for turnover among new teachers are startling. Some 20 percent of all new hires leave the classroom within three years. In urban districts, the numbers are worse—close to 50 percent of newcomers flee the profession during their first five years of teaching” (www.greatpublicschools.org).  In this current climate, simply showing up for work in the public schools has become an act of faith.  How can we draw teachers back into the room, into the center of the discussion and the embrace of supportive communities?

I wonder if we have become like Jesus’ disciples who argue along the road about who is greatest.  We are adults busy viewing the world in the way that we like; we are so consumed with grandiose dreams and faithless visions that we don’t see the children.  Oh, the interest of the children makes a great tag line for the latest political scheme.  Consider, for example, the great hoax of the “Education Lottery” perpetrated upon the people of North Carolina.  This lottery is supposed to benefit the children, but, will it—really?  According to the Raleigh Report, published by the North Carolina Council of Churches, “The pattern in other states has been that funding from the state budget drops about as much as lottery revenues provide to a dedicated purpose . . . The result is that, a few years later, education is no better off financially than it was to begin with” (Raleigh Report, March 24, 2005).

People of faith are mandated to care for the littlest and the least.  Support of the children educated in our public school systems and the adults who teach them can take many forms.  The first step is to become like a child, receiving the hospitality of a loving Savior.  For God, every day is like the first day of school.  Our names are posted by God’s door and God waits just inside to welcome us.

By Rev. Molly Shivers, Director, Burlington District Congregational Health Services Team